It’s Beginning to Look & Feel a Lot Like Christmas
It may be Advent III this week, but it sure is beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas. When several of my neighbors put up their Christmas lights two weeks before Thanksgiving, I wanted to jump out of my car and impress upon them the importance of anticipation and expectation. When I found myself putting my Christmas lights up in the cold darkness this week, I realized that perhaps my neighbors, who enjoyed the luxury of 70+ degree weather while attending to this annual chore, were perhaps the smarter ones.
Christmas lights put me into the spirit of the season, and seeing my breath while I bedazzled the bushes, was a fun reminder of home. I love to drive around and look at all the individual Christmas light displays. I still find the same joy looking at them now as I did when I was a child.
As a kid, my parents would always ride us through the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, which was only a few miles from our house. Each December the shrine would host the “Way of Lights.” From your car, you’d journey to Bethlehem and read the story of the birth of Jesus, all the while, enjoying more than a million white lights displayed.
Each year, the neighborhood I grew up in, Oak Hill Estates, had a Christmas light competition. People went all out and there were prizes awarded every year to the top three displays. By the time I was 12, I was in charge of exterior illumination. Each year I would try and outdo the last, hoping to win one of those coveted prizes. I never did win, but the competition encouraged nearly everyone in the neighborhood to put up an impressive light display.
One night each year in the middle of December, the neighborhood association would line all of the streets with luminaries. These were simple white paper bags filled with sand. A candle wrapped in foil would cast light out into the darkness. For several hours a steady stream of cars would come through the neighborhood to see the decorated houses and the luminaries. Money and food would be collected for the hungry. On those occasions when there was snow on the ground, it was as if the lights of heaven had descended upon my neighborhood.
On Friday, Amanda and I took Norah and August to Southpoint Mall to do some shopping. It was the first time I had been to a mall to do Christmas shopping in years. It was wonderful! I loved walking through the mall and seeing all of the different people walking about, each with their own retail-oriented mission. Online shopping has nothing on the real experience of shopping. I loved watching shoppers pick up various articles of clothing and hold them up to see if they might fit. I love the olfactory nirvana of a shop filled with new clothes. I love to scan a store and see all the contents at once without the tediousness of scrolling through pages on a computer. I loved watching my kids play with Legos in the Lego store. I loved finding things that I never knew I needed. While in said Lego store, I discovered the 4,383 piece Notre-Dame Lego set! This is a must have for every church dork like me and I found myself trying to work out in my mind how I could afford such a fun luxury. I was just like the 14-year-old Homer, counting how many yards I would have to mow and scheming about how many weeks it would take to be able to return to the mall and make my purchase.
I delighted in watching August discover larger than life Reindeer in a department store. I sat down and wrote letters to Santa with Norah and then later watched Santa wave at Norah and give a jolly, “Ho-Ho-Ho,” to her that echoed through the corridors. Before leaving, I stopped at the food court and ordered a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich, to be matched with an Auntie Anne’s pretzel. Like the halo in the pretzel maker’s logo, it was heavenly.
As I drove home, thinking about what it was that made the day so fun, I realized that what I loved about it all, was that it was real. It was fun to discover, to people watch, to chat with the clerks, to be filled with desire, to delight in watching the wonder of children, and to let all my senses be part of the experience.
It’s just like being in church. The Southpoint Mall is the Cathedral of Commerce and Emmanuel is the Episcopal Cathedral of the Sandhills. At Emmanuel we discover truths in our study of the Bible, we people watch, we chat with the clergy and fellow parishioners, we are filled with desire to be nearer to God, we delight in watching the children, Bing Crosby playing over the loudspeaker is replaced with a choir and a singing congregation, and my hunger for a Philly Cheesesteak is replaced with my hunger to gather around the Lord’s table.
These little memories and stories may seem a bit disparate, but if you step back and look for the common thread, it all comes back to one little baby boy born two thousand years ago in a manager in Bethlehem.
For all those who make the effort to illuminate the darkness through the display of Christmas lights, thank you. Jesus is the light in the darkness. And even for those who struggle to believe, their act to break the darkness through Christmas lights, takes us right back to the manger…like the wise men following the star.
For all those making trips to the mall, shopping local, taking their photos with Santa, buying gifts for family and friends, it is all a reflection and a reaction to the greatest gift given to humanity…a Savior, Christ the Lord.
Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine; love was born at Christmas: star and angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead, love incarnate, love divine; worship we our Jesus, but wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine, love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.